The Making of the Goodies Disaster Movie

by Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden

Genres: Humor, Comedy

97 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 1978

Reviews

[Beau Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

After seeing the Goodies on stage when they came to Australia, I was lucky enough to find this book on eBay.

The stories (ok, directionless blather) are great. In a way, it was kind of like being in a room with the three of them and just listening to them bounce ideas off each other.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Goodies were an iconic part of the British comedy scene in the 1970s and like their arguably more illustrious contemporaries, the Monty Python team, they released a series of books that extended their humour beyond TV. Unlike the Pythons whose books were often an amalgam of old sketches and other material, put together into a seemingly ad hoc format, Brooke-Taylor, Oddie and Garden have tried to produce a narrative with 'The Making of the Goodies Disaster Movie', and for the most part they have done well. However, and this is where all books from the likes of the Goodies, Python and other TV comedy shows falter, trying to transfer what works well on the television into a printed book is not easy. This book doesn't quite succeed, though it makes a very good attempt, plus the material has dated somewhat.

This may indicate that I didn't really like this book, which isn't the case. The relationship between text and images is well juxtaposed for comedic effect. Some of the text is very smart, funny and adult, something that the Goodies on TV were not always given credit for or allowed to articulate. The designer of the book has made sure the visual jokes are eye-catching and at times accurate as satire. The framing device of the Goodies referring to a book on film making for scouts by Baden-Powell, with the associated lampooning of old racist and archly conservative tropes from the 'boy's own adventure ' genre is very clever.

However, 'The Making of the Goodies Disaster Film' is limited in its appeal because ultimately it is a TV tie-in for a comedy show that is over 40 years old. The cultural references that form a huge part of the humour of the book are very dated, and by association some of the comedic writing is as well. Unless one understands and appreciates the 1970s context of the book I would suspect most readers today would struggle to engage with it.

In conclusion, whilst this is not a bad book it has a limited audience today; it will be most enjoyed by fans of the Goodies or those who have an interest in British Oxbridge comedy of that period.